Carrington's Crusade: Learning is Fun For Us

Well we have gone from learning about the forest habitat to know learning about the freshwater habitat, a.k.a. river, stream, pond, of Texas. And guess what?! Not one of my children complained that they did not want to "do school work." My sister-in-law (thanks Auntie Tina) works for Texas Parks and Wildlife and when she saw we were learning about habitats she gave us a bounty of great information about Texas animals and habitats. One of the fliers was about a place called Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center. Since Brian is off this week on vacation we all loaded up, including Sarah because a road trip to learn isn't complete without her, and drove for just a couple hours to learn up close about this habitat and the inhabitants of it.

As we drove up the excitement in the van was so fun! Brian and I thought we were only going to take the kids to see tanks of fish but this was to be WAY more! Our day started off with a learning session with a diver in a tank of fish. He fed the fish and told us all about them. Then we took a tram to tour the fishery. At one point some of us got off the tram and walked along a trail where we saw so many amazing things along little streams and ponds. Evelyn and Owen walked along with us and even stopped to look at the fish. Even though both little ones are non verbal we still tell them about what we want them to learn because who are we to say how much they are able to take in just because they don't come right out and give us a dissertation on habitats?!

At the end of the walk we sat down to have a picnic lunch by a big pond. The kids saw an older couple fishing and watched them catch a couple of cat fish. After wards came the totally fun part for the kids and Brian: they were given fishing poles and bait so they could go fishing. Ethan was so beside himself with excitement!! He looked at me and said, "mom I could do this all day long!" Well, that's great he can but I don't know about this mom. Anyways, each of the children got chance to fish with Daddy and he taught Madelaine and Ethan how to cast off. Now Ethan thinks he is an expert fisherman.

The weather was absolutely perfect! The grounds of our classroom for the day was way beyond our expectations! And this mommy was able to watch my children learn and have fun once again!

Since October is National Down syndrome Awareness month we all wore our super cool tshirts sharing our passion. Makes for a great topic of conversation aside from "are all of these children yours?". We were able to share about Down syndrome, our large family, and the fact that we home school. I think a few hearts were touched today and that is what our family likes to have happen.